Surfing the blog world with Feedster, and have come across a few more XML database links:

Berkely XML DB by Sleepycat sounds interesting. Has no mention of XQuery, though, which is a big drawback for our needs... (here's a development weblog for their xml database)

NeoCore XMS sounds great, but rather pricey (advanced XQuery, integrated XSLT, etc...)

Here's a thread on Slashdot about Open Source XML Databases... The thread includes this link to a weblog about xml databases, but it seems rather dated (last post was Aug 2002).

Notes from the conference call today.

I published my thoughts on the paper here.

This guy really gets it. Extremely refreshing to hear from someone else who sees through the hype, but stills sees the promise, in learning objects.

Online learning is different than traditional, conventional classroom-based learning. Not necessarily better or worse, but different, and we need to recognize that in order to do it properly. “You can’t just put a course online.” - Exactly. You can move teaching or instruction online, but it’s a different thing than just save-as-online-course.

David Wiley just posted a link to his “Educational Content Viewer” prototype. Some scary synchronicity here - I’ve been thinking about building a learning object playback utility that could be embedded in CAREO. Wonder how this prototype gets its data? If it’s already reading from CGI somewhere, it should be pretty straightforward to get that working.

HitSOFTWARE claims their jAllora product to be a relational-to-xml mapper (and vice versa). Geert Clememsen from Frontbase just sent a message saying it works with the FrontBase database server.

Sounds interesting. Didn’t see any claims of XQuery support though (the closest they come to mentioning support is in this white paper, which doesn’t come right out and say they support it, only that they should). Will have to dig deeper. It’s also a little pricey. It’s good that it’s java, and has lots of tools, but it’s bad that it requires a separate webservice provider to manage/interact with it (ala Tamino) - an integrated solution like XStreamDB would be nicer for our needs.

It appears as though the SciQ live broadcast event went off successfully. That's cool. This is the first live, streaming event hosted through CAREO.

Just running stats on it now, but it looks like we had 190 simultaneous users, with about 1800 page views. Hopefully we'll get some stats from Apple or Akamai about the number of video streams served.

I'm crunching the apache log from www.sciq.ca now to see who/what/where people were going. I'll post more info later...

Finally taking the time to go through this paper (described here) by David Wiley. Here’s a couple stream-of-consciousness thoughts while reading it:

• 2.1: Decontextualized Learning: David discusses the paradox of context vs. reusability. This is a huge issue, but he doesn’t mention that a learning object can have multiple, simultaneous contexts, of different granularities and sources. An object can simultaneously be contextualized as a biochemical reaction, as a nutritional process, a socioeconomic driver, etc… These contexts don’t even have to be embedded in the LO’s metadata - they can be externally derived, as well.

I decided I should to a test installation of the ALOHA Server application, which CAREO uses as its metadata repository (CAREO is technically a client application of this server).

Grabbed the documentation, PHP files etc… and had it running in less than an hour on my TiBook. If you have more experience with MySQL, you could probably get it done in less than 30 minutes.

Pointed ALOHA at it, and added the first learning object within about 5 minutes of turning the lights on. Cool.

Just got an email invite to a conference call on Friday, with “Mr. Learning Objects” - David Wiley. Should be an interesting session. How on earth would anyone live with a reputation like that?

From the invitation:

Mike just got back from Vancouver, and was talking about an XML database he saw there: Bluestream XStreamDB

They claim to support XQuery via JDBC somehow. It’s a java-based solution (i.e., portable - that’s a Good Thing). I’m downloading it now to see what it does. Looks VERY promising.

Details available here.

UPDATE: Wow! It worked right off the bat! First XML DB to do THAT for me… And it comes with a whiz-bang management app, too! So far, much more impressed with XStreamDB than anything else I’ve tried… Oh, and it’s not just portable, it’s EMBEDDABLE. We could conceivably embed the jars for XStreamDB INSIDE CAREO for the repository in a box. It doesn’t come easier than that!

Just came across this handy MovableType plugin: MT-RSSFEED.

It can take any RSS feed (static file, or URL), and parse it for display within a MovableType weblog. I’ve changed over the RSS subscriptions to CAREO on the right sidebar to use this plugin, and it works pretty well.

There are lots more great MT plugins at the MT-Plugins Directory.

UPDATE: I’ve also put the “other” way of subscribing to RSS feeds in a page here, since it’s valuable in contexts outside of MovableType (like, say, Blackboard, or WebCT, or whatever…)

When CAREO is launched, it does some stuff to modify its connection to a database, in order to allow me to point it to different databases at runtime without touching code or recompiling. In UCApplication.java, I modify the connection dictionary for the EOModel's EOAdaptor, feeding it URLs for databases, usernames, passwords, etc...

This has worked like a charm on MacOSX and MacOSX Server (of course), but now, on Solaris, when I set the connection dictionary, and do a test connection to make sure it worked, I get this weird, cryptic SQLException error via WebObjects' JDBCAdaptor class:

This is actually pretty cool. Another great link from Dale Pike!

Technorati.com checks a boatload of weblogs, and maps the links between them. Feed it a URL, and it tells you who else links to it.

What a cool way to find people who are linking to (and, one would therefore assume interested in) the contents of a weblog.

Something like this would be a slick addition to CAREO - map which people are subscribed to a learning object, and perhaps which other objects they've subscribed to, generating some form of dynamic relationship between objects. Something like the Amazon.com "You might like..." feature...